Cal Newport: How Leaders Can Get More Done By Staying Focused

I recently spoke to Cal Newport, an assistant professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, and the author of the recent book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. In our conversation, Newport talked about how business leaders can stay focused in a highly distracting workplace environment, how remote workers can stay focused without having a traditional office and why distractions are never good for your productivity.

Newport is also the author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, a controversial book which debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice. In addition, he has written three popular books of unconventional advice for students and speaks at Colleges and conferences globally. His ideas and writing are frequently featured in major publications and on TV and radio and he writes a very popular blog called "Study Hacks."

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Dan Schawbel: How do business leaders stay focused in a workplace with many distractions?

Cal Newport: Let's start with the "why" driving the need for focus. I believe that one of the most important tools in our 21st century economy is deep work, which is when you focus without distraction on something hard for a long time. This tool produces an absurd amount of value, but the surprising thing is that almost no knowledge workers use it anymore, instead spending almost 100% of their day rapidly flicking their attention from one thing to another -- crippling their productivity and producing results of muted value.

If you're one of the few who develops and regularly applies this deep work tool, you can quickly stand out. I've written exhaustively about the many different types of strategies and exercises that can help you hone your ability to perform deep work, but the key first step is just recognizing its value. Once you realize that deep work is like a super power in the typical knowledge work field, it's much, much easier to prioritize it.

Schawbel: What do you recommend to remote employees and managers for getting work done more effectively?

Newport:For remote work arrangements, I think structuring communication is key. In more detail, fix a few thirty-minute "office hour" windows during the day when your colleagues know that you'll be at your computer reachable by instant messenger and phone. This is when you communicate with your colleagues during the day and make decisions, plan things, talk through ideas. (E-mail in this scenario is not used a tool for communication but only for sending files and information for later use.)

Outside of office hours, there's no inbox to be checking so you can should be able to easily schedule long blocks of deep work.

If remote employees ran their schedules like this I think they quantity and quality of what they produce would increase dramatically.

Schawbel:Can you give an example of a leader who was able to accomplish a major goal by doing deep work as you suggest in your book?

Newport:In the book, I tell a story about the entrepreneur Peter Shankman. Not so long ago, Shankman had a book deadline pending and was having a hard time concentrating enough to write it. So he did something extreme. He booked a roundtrip business class ticket to Tokyo. He wrote the whole way there. Had a coffee in the airport. Then flew home, writing the whole way back. He finished a full draft of the manuscript in this 30-hour period, due, in large part, to the intense deep work enabled by being trapped in an airplane seat with no distractions.

This is an important point, deep work doesn't make you a little more productive, it instead makes you massively more productive. I think people significantly underestimate how much poorer they're performing when they're not working deeply.

Schawbel:I get distracted from work during the day but almost always achieve my goals. Why haven't these distractions (texting friends, looking at social networking feeds) prevented me from getting work done?

Newport:People can and do get things done without deep work, but my argument is that they'd produce better results, in less time, with less fatigue if they made deep work the core of their professional life.

For example, my commitment to deep work has allowed me by the age of 33 to become a successful academic (I've published close to 50 peer-reviewed papers) and author (I've published five books), while rarely working during the evening or on weekends. Now if I didn't use deep work, I could probably still be an academic and writer, but judging from experience, this would require working late at night and on weekends, a lot more anxiety and exhaustion, and probably lower quality output.

A deep life is a good life! I highly recommend it...

Schawbel:How do you hire for work ethic? What signs do you look for when you review a resume, a LinkedIn profile or during an interview?

Newport:Talk to candidate about their workflow. How do they plan their week? How do they manage obligations? What's their typical workday like. If a candidate isn't thinking about these questions, than even if they're bright and really hard working, you're probably hiring someone who is going to tackle each day in a frenzy of inbox-driven, reactive energy, which means they're performing at a fraction of their cognitive capacity.

I'm a partner and research director at Future Workplace, an executive development firm dedicated to rethinking and reimagining the workplace. I also wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Promote Yourself, and Me 2.0. In 2012, I was named to the Forbes Magazine 3...